


Music on the iPod

by ordinarylittleme



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Angst, Cheating, F/F, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 13:35:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13295979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinarylittleme/pseuds/ordinarylittleme
Summary: This is the most 18+ thing I've ever written, which isn't explicit, but let this serve as a warning.





	Music on the iPod

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most 18+ thing I've ever written, which isn't explicit, but let this serve as a warning.

The music on the iPod is turned up so loud it should drown out any unwanted background noise, but the music is coming out in stunted gasps, stuck on grating, choppy notes and colored with buzzing static; and the silence of abrupt deaths and even more abrupt lives hangs heavy in the air. The lyric makes no sense and Alice wonders if she should just turn the damned thing off, but she knows that Bella needs the distraction, even if it were in the form of an annoying, teen-girl tune.

On the nights they manage to get the iPod playing their songs, they do not go beyond cuddling. Bella lays her head down on Alice's shoulder and draws sloppy circles on Alice's bared stomach. She kisses random spots on Alice's skin and hums along to songs she barely recognizes now. She keeps her eyes closed and drifts in and out of dreams with a sigh on her lips. It is not a perfect setup, not even a good one, but Alice prefers it to the screams Bella usually lets out. On those other nights without the squealing of a faulty iPod to keep them company, Alice makes up for the silence and nightmares by trying her hardest to exhaust Bella so that she falls into a dreamless sleep as Alice presses cold kisses on her forehead.

They are gentle during those dark nights, holding and touching each other as if they were fragile porcelain (but, to Alice, Bella is always porcelain), as if it were the first time all over again. They come with quiet gasps and near silent moans, tears down their cheeks and cold, smooth fingers in wet heat, Bella's sweaty skin feeling so uncomfortably warm against Alice's cold body.

The walls are paper-thin and people (and vampires) can be so unconsciously loud. The music from a struggling iPod, if you could call it that (broken and muted in a way good music should never be), filters through and strangles at the sluggish, thick air.

Worst of all, Edward can hear the way Alice's girlish voice slides over Bella's and it conjures in his tired, too-old mind (because that is all he does: think, think and think, except when he does not and what does he _do_ when he does not think?) a scene that shouldn't exist but does, an _abomination_ if it was back when he was human: something with a pink tint and a rosy scent, tangled limbs and flawless pale skin, resplendent morning sunlight on clean sheets and she imagines gentle butterfly kisses and warm hugs as Alice wakes Bella up with three fingers inside her. Only he has seen and heard enough of Alice and Bella to know that the scene must be black and white, sharp angles, scars and bruises, and the silence is more than likely a deadly reminder; and love (for he has also seen how they look at each other, and no amount of explanation can nullify that) the only flicker of color.

Even so, to an unwilling, disgusted listener, the two of them sound so much like good tidings and even his painfully clenching, dead heart manages a little flutter in sympathetic joy (or is that acknowledged defeat, now that he knows Bella's gone forever?).

Perhaps it is in retaliation (and again, perhaps not) that he finally gives in to Jasper's unsubtle advances, kissing him with a desperation rivaling that of when he feeds. He (needs) wants to burn out the images of Bella from the backs of his eyelids.


End file.
